Rebels With a Cause
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Movie Reviews of Rebels With a Cause
Movie Review: a good resource
Summary: 5 Stars
i used this dvd as a resource in a research project. i was studying the vietnam anti-war protest movement. the interviews on the dvd give good insight into SDS (students for a democratic society). i even quoted directly from the disc into my paper...the 60s...it a wonder that everyone survived.Movie Review: Glimpses of Radical Politics Past
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm surprised that no one has reviewed this DVD yet. It deserves to be seen by anyone hoping to comprehend, at this late date, the important role of SDS in the political turmoil of the '60s. Helen Garvy, a long-time SDS member and staffer, has produced an utterly sincere documentary about SDS's history, as seen through the eyes of those who participated in it. Given that upfront slant, it is reasonably objective and thoughtful. It is also crisply produced, well-photographed, and nicely packaged.
I'm not quite sure, however, what today's generation of college students and anti-war activists are likely to make of it. As someone who was immersed in the youth culture of the '60sand 70's, I found it slightly unnerving to watch 90 minutes of greying radicals -- most of them old enough to be grandparents -- reminisce about civil rights, the anti-war movement, and the hopes and dreams of that earlier era. Not that they don't have plenty of worthy things to say -- they do -- but the juxtaposition of interview clips with b&w photos of the same members as young radicals definitely had me contemplating my own mortality.
Contrast this, if you will, with the energizing effect of another recent documentary, "The Weather Underground," which has similar juxtapositions, but somehow manages (through a wider array of film clips) to actual throw the viewer back into the emotional intensity of the time. "Rebels With a Cause," by contrast, feels more like sitting down with one's parents and leafing through an old photo-album.
Still, I don't mean to damn Garvy's effort with faint praise. This is valuable oral history, perfect for stimulating discussion in a study group or class. SDS was a remarkable phenomenon, the classic New Left organization that went from left-liberal to radical to revolutionary over the course of 10 short years, until it finally blew apart from sectarian in-fighting. The film is especially good in covering the early years when civil rights and community organizing were the primary focus; (the anti-war focus didn't really kick in until the escalation of the war in '64-65.) This is a part of the '60s that often gets short shrift, with Martin Luther King made to serve as shorthand for what really was a more complex and far-reaching movement.
I've always been fascinated by SDS, perhaps because I was never a member. By the time I got to college (1968), SDS was already beginning to sink into Marxist-Leninist rhetorical excess and I watched the feeding frenzy from afar, diligently reading my best friend's New Left Notes each week until my eyes glazed over. By the next fall, SDS was kaput, for all intents and purposes. It is to Helen Garvy's credit that she succeeds in putting it all together, salvaging the admirable from the deplorable.
Movie Review: TO BE YOUNG WAS VERY HEAVEN, PART II
Summary: 4 Stars
In previous reviews in this space this writer has alluded several times to the 1960's movements for social change -the defense of the Cuban Revolution, the fight for nuclear disarmament, the centrally important black civil rights fight, the struggle against the Vietnam War and the emerging struggles for women's and gay rights. And ultimately, for a few (too few) of us, the necessary struggle to change the social organization of American society-the fight for socialism. In short, all the signposts for that part of a political generation, my generation, which in shorthand I will call the Generation of '68. Let us be clear, nostalgia and the ravages of time on the memory on the part of this writer aside, this was a short but intense period that he believes requires serious study.
Militant leftists today face many, if not all, of the social problems that confronted the generation of '68. Thus, a careful viewing of this film is warranted by those who want to understand what went right and what went wrong with student movement centered on the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) of the 1960's that held out much promise but in the end left the field to the ugly predator capitalists and their agents. Many of the points discussed in this documentary parallel those made in Professor Todd Gitlin's seminal book: THE SIXTIES: YEARS OF HOPE, DAYS OF RAGE. I have fully reviewd that important book elsewhere. One can profit from using both sources, although Professor Gitlin is now as then a political opponent of mine.
I would add two additional comments concerning the `talking heads' that are used to tell the story of the student struggles. I found that not one of interviewees mentioned the word socialism as an animating force behind their very deeply held convictions at the time. Now that is neither here nor there except that in the end the fight for socialism was dictated by the struggles not only for its positive social value but as the only way to effective fight in the `belly of the beast'. That tells part of the tale. The other is that these people have `made it' in capitalist society, as the final credits make clear, since that time. However, we have a little problem that the `monster' is still with us. I would be the last to begrudge anyone from that time their memories of a time `when to be young was very heaven'. But I prefer the slogan - Don't Reminisce-Organize!